Since I have never found any positive place in the world, except in my simple prolix role as progenitor & dad (les enfants sont facile a faire, plus difficile de proteger, enseigner, sopporter), I still wonder, at age 56 & facing faiblesse & the downward spiral to death, where I might have made a difference (that is, a positive one) and how I might have gained the ability to do so.
What does the world need that a petty, timid, conflicted creature like myself could supply? Instead of waiting for the answer - the wrong approach, to wait for an answer - I have to waive the question and proceed. Part of the answer must be my family.
But another part could be the Stoic College. Even my pathetic hash of a brain and my too-soft little slip of a soul might help in the transmission of the Stoic wisdom (as opposed to obsessive duality and polar extremism) to people. And that would be a positive thing on this divided, bloody-minded, madness-driven Earth.
Hmmm. Question answered?
Monday, September 12, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Lax Lenders, Keenly Kept
Logging in at work today I see that my firm's team of attorneys "Defeats Class Certification in Billion-Dollar Mortgage MDL" (MDL = Multi-District Litigation, which here was apparently prevented from becoming a proper class action of the aggrieved against the lenders). Initial response? Darn. Those lenders, who refuse to play fair and deluge everyone with ads for loans they can't afford, deserve to be taken to the cleaners on a regular basis until they start policing themselves. The class of dupes who were already taken to the cleaners by these same politically invulnerable lenders need to wise up, yes, indeed: learn the ropes, learn arithmetic, don't sign unless it's both a good deal AND affordable! But it's the dupes who are loosing their homes - not the alien, removed, exploitation-bent banking functionaries or their fortress-like corporations and lawyers.
Of course, for lender corporations and so on to "police themselves" would mean stopping their flood of advertising (unlikely, because then the artifically inflated loan market would falter), which advertising is intended to sucker people (and I mean here human people, as opposed to the corporate 'person') into bad loans (a loan being defined as bad for human people if it has variable interest rates, balloon payments, or - of course - high interest rates, ie, a loan more of a threat to the borrower than a help) and providing, instead, good loans (fixed interest rates, required background checks, low interest rates, built-in mediation in case of disaster to the borrower, legal penalties for borrowers who lie about their assets and income to begin with).
Since some 90% of polled Americans think they are smarter than average (!? see note), "pulling a fast one" is the modern borrower's method of choice for getting ahead in the world. This, like bad tenants in real estate situations, creates an adversarial position between borrower and lender. And the lenders, of course, are not stupid - they have adopted exactly the same ethos with regard to lending - make the loan then sell it to another 'buyer' who will then sell it to another, and so on - with no regard for honesty or for the borrowers involved.
Good old class warfare - exploit the loopholes, steal from the downtrodden, ransack the blind engines of economics! Of course, the people who are hoodwinked by these barbarians on both sides are the rest of us, the ones who want to live rather than "pull a fast one".
So, when I see a legal class action against the bad guys shot down, I'm disappointed. A normal moron, unlike the present one, would think, "Oh, good - my company is doing well!" But I think, "Oh, crap, the people lost another round; the old cycle continues."
Of course, for lender corporations and so on to "police themselves" would mean stopping their flood of advertising (unlikely, because then the artifically inflated loan market would falter), which advertising is intended to sucker people (and I mean here human people, as opposed to the corporate 'person') into bad loans (a loan being defined as bad for human people if it has variable interest rates, balloon payments, or - of course - high interest rates, ie, a loan more of a threat to the borrower than a help) and providing, instead, good loans (fixed interest rates, required background checks, low interest rates, built-in mediation in case of disaster to the borrower, legal penalties for borrowers who lie about their assets and income to begin with).
Since some 90% of polled Americans think they are smarter than average (!? see note), "pulling a fast one" is the modern borrower's method of choice for getting ahead in the world. This, like bad tenants in real estate situations, creates an adversarial position between borrower and lender. And the lenders, of course, are not stupid - they have adopted exactly the same ethos with regard to lending - make the loan then sell it to another 'buyer' who will then sell it to another, and so on - with no regard for honesty or for the borrowers involved.
Good old class warfare - exploit the loopholes, steal from the downtrodden, ransack the blind engines of economics! Of course, the people who are hoodwinked by these barbarians on both sides are the rest of us, the ones who want to live rather than "pull a fast one".
So, when I see a legal class action against the bad guys shot down, I'm disappointed. A normal moron, unlike the present one, would think, "Oh, good - my company is doing well!" But I think, "Oh, crap, the people lost another round; the old cycle continues."
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Catholic Crimes of THIS Century
I have been reading an interesting book about the remarkable pope, Pope John Paul II, born Carl Voitawa (Karol Wojtyla), and his life & times. This man burst on the international scene way back in the 70s, and caused many hopeful waves - at first. There was hope of some peace between the absurd feuding factions of religiosity, and even between religious people in general and the rest of the world.
Yet events and dirty old reality have combined with Catholic dogmatics and illogic to dampen most all of the hope John Paul II had kindled in this sad old world. This is true in areas of Ecumenism, of inter-faith toleration and respect, and in intra-church areas, such as the role of women and so on. The greatest dismay comes from the most unexpected areas - one now common knowledge, and the other still largely ignored: (i) The bumbling, embarrassed cover-ups, secrecy and priest-shiftings that enabled for so many years the sexual abuse of kids within the Church; and (ii) The rape and sexual abuse of nuns by the African clergy, a less-reported nightmare that has been going on for many years, too.
This second crime-wave is, I feel, even more disturbing than the first. It is mostly occurs (to my knowledge) in Africa, arising not only out of male needs and African sexual mores, but also out of the African AIDS epidemic. Fearful of satisfying their natural but illicit sex desires with prostitutes, a group at high risk for contracting the fearful virus, Catholic priests - Priests! - have apparently taken to bullying nuns into this role. It is an astounding and under-reported crime wave.
For a priest to break his celibate vows is one thing; but to compound that sin by rape is another. For while a "simple" rape of a woman by a priest, however managed, is crime enough, it is still a worse crime that a dedicated religious person, who keeps a sacrament of remaining chaste in accord with her calling, off all people, should be violated - it is more than indignity and trauma, it is betrayal and crime. And yet, beyond this, not only is that woman vicitimized and her religious vocation sullied, but if pregnancy ensues, the poor victim must be punished by being completely cast out of her vocation.
But it does not end there. Add to this the horror of an AIDS epidemic running like wildfire through Africa, and foolish people - including apparently many in the African clergy - embracing an appalling, superstitious folk-fallacy that sex with a virgin somehow "cures" AIDS! Now female religious orders are turned into prime targets for rape, living "morning after pills" for priests' ill-advised sexual dalliances! Worse still, horribile dictu, the poor victim by then is then infected - in effect, given a death sentence - while the ignorant arrogant perpetrator goes off in the mistaken belief that he no longer has the AIDS virus! An unbelievable horror that the Holy See had, at the time of the book's writing, completely and utterly refused to respond to.
This is not the Church that I believed existed in the Roman Catholic world. The foolish and constipated sanctioning of such hideous crimes by the Catholic hierarchy, by the current Pope, and by that appealing old man, now passed on, Pope John Paul II himself, has fouled those waters that I had hoped still possessed some sense of mercy, and order, and decency. I have read this from one book, and have yet to catch up on the status of these problems as of 2011, but I have a feeling that even now little has been done, whether to castigate the wicked, educate the fools, or to purge the priestly ranks.
Yet events and dirty old reality have combined with Catholic dogmatics and illogic to dampen most all of the hope John Paul II had kindled in this sad old world. This is true in areas of Ecumenism, of inter-faith toleration and respect, and in intra-church areas, such as the role of women and so on. The greatest dismay comes from the most unexpected areas - one now common knowledge, and the other still largely ignored: (i) The bumbling, embarrassed cover-ups, secrecy and priest-shiftings that enabled for so many years the sexual abuse of kids within the Church; and (ii) The rape and sexual abuse of nuns by the African clergy, a less-reported nightmare that has been going on for many years, too.
This second crime-wave is, I feel, even more disturbing than the first. It is mostly occurs (to my knowledge) in Africa, arising not only out of male needs and African sexual mores, but also out of the African AIDS epidemic. Fearful of satisfying their natural but illicit sex desires with prostitutes, a group at high risk for contracting the fearful virus, Catholic priests - Priests! - have apparently taken to bullying nuns into this role. It is an astounding and under-reported crime wave.
For a priest to break his celibate vows is one thing; but to compound that sin by rape is another. For while a "simple" rape of a woman by a priest, however managed, is crime enough, it is still a worse crime that a dedicated religious person, who keeps a sacrament of remaining chaste in accord with her calling, off all people, should be violated - it is more than indignity and trauma, it is betrayal and crime. And yet, beyond this, not only is that woman vicitimized and her religious vocation sullied, but if pregnancy ensues, the poor victim must be punished by being completely cast out of her vocation.
But it does not end there. Add to this the horror of an AIDS epidemic running like wildfire through Africa, and foolish people - including apparently many in the African clergy - embracing an appalling, superstitious folk-fallacy that sex with a virgin somehow "cures" AIDS! Now female religious orders are turned into prime targets for rape, living "morning after pills" for priests' ill-advised sexual dalliances! Worse still, horribile dictu, the poor victim by then is then infected - in effect, given a death sentence - while the ignorant arrogant perpetrator goes off in the mistaken belief that he no longer has the AIDS virus! An unbelievable horror that the Holy See had, at the time of the book's writing, completely and utterly refused to respond to.
This is not the Church that I believed existed in the Roman Catholic world. The foolish and constipated sanctioning of such hideous crimes by the Catholic hierarchy, by the current Pope, and by that appealing old man, now passed on, Pope John Paul II himself, has fouled those waters that I had hoped still possessed some sense of mercy, and order, and decency. I have read this from one book, and have yet to catch up on the status of these problems as of 2011, but I have a feeling that even now little has been done, whether to castigate the wicked, educate the fools, or to purge the priestly ranks.
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